Svenson tapped his ash into the matchbox. ‘Lydia Vandaariff was a passenger on that dirigible.’
Schoepfil shrugged. ‘I see you have little experience of men of high finance.’
‘The circumstances of her death were appalling.’
‘Just Lord Vandaariff’s style – the others would believe themselves safe from his hand in Lydia’s presence. What is more, his remaining enemies have been shown he will do anything! His own child! They cower in fear! But to my question. When did you realize the dirigible would sink?’
‘When it struck the water.’
‘You jest. Come, was it a triggered device, like those we have seen here?’
‘Why is that important? The airship sank, nearly all aboard were killed –’
‘Ah, and who was not? If there was a confederate, that confederate would have been most likely to survive.’
Svenson let the smoke enter his lungs, drawing strength. ‘If you suspect I am that confederate, what use in denying the fact? You will believe me or you won’t.’
‘My reasons are my own. Could you answer?’
‘Six people survived. Three are since dead – Francis Xonck, Elöise Dujong, Celeste Temple. Two others, Cardinal Chang and the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza, may be dead as well – which leaves me.’ He ground the butt into the matchbox. ‘But it does not matter. You are wrong.’
‘About you?’
‘About everything. The airship went down through no pre-existing plan. Robert Vandaariff was defeated as much as Henry Xonck or the Duke. His resurrection at Parchfeldt only put a monster in his piece. Whatever Vandaariff once wanted in his life, he does not, I assure you, want it now.’
‘Shocking statements! What can you mean?’
‘He is insane. Quite literally of another mind.’
Schoepfil drummed the fingers of one hand upon the table. Then he rapped the table with his fist. ‘It is no good, Doctor. The attempt is worthy, but I know you to be wrong as well!’ A panel in the wall behind him popped open, and Schoepfil turned. ‘Mr Kelling – already? Admirable dispatch.’
Kelling, a slim fellow with the angular features of an apologetic fox, edged in holding a wide tray laden with squat bottles. In each bottle floated an odd-shaped mass – tubular, sponge-like, ink-stained – like a collection of shapeless invertebrates. But Svenson could not hide from his own anatomical knowledge, and his throat tightened. Each specimen jar contained a different sample of corrupted tissue, excised from a child’s body. Francesca Trapping. He leapt for the revolver.
With a speed belying his stoutness, Schoepfil snatched a wooden tray and swung it hard into the side of Svenson’s head. Stunned, the Doctor took two more rapid blows, one to his reaching hand and another to his face, the last forcing him to stagger from the table. He looked up, blinking, furious, impotent. Schoepfil retained his seat – the revolver untouched but within reach. His expression remained cheerful.
‘A surgeon and a spy, yet you retain this sentiment – as if ever there were two professions less suited to such a keepsake. The child is dead, sir. Forbear.’
Svenson felt his face burning. Schoepfil reached for the nearest jar. But Kelling had not gone, and whispered a private word. Schoepfil nodded eagerly.
‘A reprieve! Though I will want your opinion, Doctor, for these samples appear to be nothing like those collected from the blast sites. One itches to speculate irresponsibly.’
He sniffed at Svenson’s revolver. ‘That stays here.’ Schoepfil flung the greatcoat across the table for Svenson to catch. ‘Though I should not wear it. On the contrary, you will wish to trade its warmth for an iced orange squash!’
Kelling waited in the corridor, next to an ovoid hatch, as on a warship. Svenson followed Schoepfil into a dark passageway that smelt of mould. He considered attacking Schoepfil – the way was so narrow that the man might not be able to turn – but hesitated, and in his hesitation felt the weight of his exhaustion and despair. If he did escape, where would he go? What would he do? Svenson felt as alone as he ever had in life.
The air was damp, smelling of rust. They walked on. Finally Svenson felt a single gloved finger impertinently touch his lips. He resisted the urge to bite it. With a gentle scrape, Schoepfil eased aside a tiny panel in the wall: a viewing window the size of a playing card. Through the opening came light and warm, wet air laced with the rotten tang of sulphur … and the echoes of water, splashing, slapping … the sounds of people in a bath.
A very large bath. Svenson dug the monocle from his tunic, wiped it on his trouser leg. He had seen bathhouses before, but rarely so opulent or so old as the one he was peering at now – as if the city’s Roman bones had been overlaid with stucco flowers and birds, the brick archways enamelled with tile. Attendants crossed between pools bearing trays of refreshment and piles of thick Turkish towels.
A splash recalled Svenson’s attention to the pool before his eyes. Along its far edge floated a line of women, rosy with heat, hair wrapped in turbans, bathing costumes of thin muslin plastered to their flesh. Svenson stared, dull-hearted, at bare throats and shoulders, at bosoms winking above the lapping pool. One lady raised a dripping arm, a signal. More splashes, beyond his view, and a new woman, grey-haired and fat, swam to the centre of the pool. She bobbed her head.
‘The ladies you sent for …’
Svenson could not see whom she addressed – they were beneath the tiny window – but he stifled a gasp as another figure glided forward. A muslin bathing costume clung to her torso, and her bare limbs shimmered. The grey-haired woman made an introduction.
‘Rosamonde, Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza, Your Majesty. An Italian gentlewoman.’
The Contessa shyly blinked her violet eyes. With her black hair wrapped away, she appeared disturbingly unadorned, almost innocent.
‘I am much honoured by Your Majesty’s attention,’ she murmured, nodding to the space directly beneath Svenson’s panel.
Svenson spun to Schoepfil, but the man eagerly nodded him back to the window. A second figure floated into view. Svenson could not breathe.
‘And the Contessa’s companion …’ The speaker paused to suggest her disapproval. ‘A Miss Celestial Temple.’
The scar above her ear peeped from the turban and fresh abrasions dotted her cheeks … but it was her. She was alive.
Alive and with the Contessa, and somehow here, at an unimaginable audience with the Queen herself. Schoepfil rocked with satisfaction, like a schoolboy.
‘For God’s sake,’ Svenson whispered, ‘who are you?’
Schoepfil shifted to better press his mouth to Doctor Svenson’s ear.
‘Who else could I be, Doctor? I am Robert Vandaariff’s heir!’
Seven
Thermæ
Following Colonel Bronque down a corridor of silver mirrors, Miss Temple was so taken with excitement at their destination as to forget the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza walking beside her, until that woman reached out to flick Miss Temple’s arm. Miss Temple snapped her mouth shut, abashed to find it had been open. The Contessa’s expression had changed as well. Deference cloaked her animal confidence. Glancing back, Colonel Bronque appraised the women with a gaze that promised nothing.
They reached a bright room where well-dressed men and women gathered, palpably expectant. Bronque did not pause. Twice more their uniformed Virgil ignored similar weigh-points of privilege, delivering them at last to a strange oval door, made of metal and opened by a wheel at its centre instead of a knob. The wheel was spun by a footman and they descended to a shabby landing. Here waited a single man, whose broad face seemed a size too large for the wiry hair that gripped his skull. He consulted a pocket watch. Colonel Bronque came to a military stop and clicked his heels.
‘My Lord Axewith.’
‘Ah. Bronque.’
The Colonel waited. The Privy Minister, marooned, only sighed.
‘My lord?’
Bronque followed the Minister’s wary glance at the women, whose attention was dut
ifully turned – Miss Temple taking the Contessa’s lead – to the peeling paint.
‘I do not require Her Majesty’s seal, Bronque, but Lord Vandaariff is insistent. Of course he is correct. Measures of historic consequence ought to be enacted by the monarch. But it leaves me waiting until I am a wilted stick.’ Axewith – whose lantern jaw and spatulate nose suggested the face of a stranded turtle – tugged at his collar. ‘And just when so many other pressing matters are … well … pressing.’
Bronque nodded to the satchel under Axewith’s arm. ‘May I wait in your stead, my lord, while you attend to business in a more congenial place?’
‘Damned kind of you.’ Axewith sighed sadly. ‘But Reasons of State, I’m afraid. Reasons of State. And I cannot disappoint Lord Vandaariff …’
Another flick on the arm brought Miss Temple’s attention to the arrival of an elegantly dressed older woman, of an age and grudging mutter with Miss Temple’s Aunt Agathe. She addressed the Contessa without a word of greeting.
‘You will remain silent unless spoken to. At a signal from the Duchess of Cogstead, who will make your introduction, the interview is terminated. Now, the attiring rooms are here …’
The older lady opened another oval door and lifted her dress, stepping over the sill. The Contessa went next, eyes darting once behind. Miss Temple glanced in turn, curious to catch Lord Axewith’s reaction, but Lord Axewith was tapping at the clouded face of his pocket watch. It was Colonel Bronque who met Miss Temple’s gaze, his eyes as dull as two tarnished coins.
‘You will be collected. Do not forget the Duchess’s signal.’ Their guide’s voice sank to a vicious warning. ‘And do not stare.’
As she stalked off, female attendants appeared, one for each of them.
‘Stare at what?’
‘At whom, Celeste. Pay attention.’
The attiring room’s floor was yellowed marble, its walls pebbled with paint blisters. The air was moist and warm, as if they were calling upon the Queen at her laundry – an impression reinforced by the attendants gently guiding them to alcoves hung with linen curtains. Inside stood a wardrobe. A touch from her attendant had Miss Temple sitting on a wooden stool.
‘If the lady would lean her head …’
Miss Temple did so and the attendant gathered up her curls. To her left, the Contessa’s brilliant black hair disappeared into a deftly wound white towel that was quickly pinned up like a Turk’s.
‘If the lady would straighten …’
Miss Temple, her hair tucked tightly away, felt fingers picking down her back. In a trice her dress had been unlaced. The attendant tugged at the ties of her corset, and then removed her shift. The attendants unlaced the ladies’ boots and peeled each stockinged leg until both women sat, apart from their turbaned heads, completely nude. The Contessa kept a grip on Miss Temple, squeezing hard.
‘Do you recall what we spoke of, Celeste, in the coach?’
Miss Temple quite helplessly shook her head.
‘We spoke of redemption – and a certain person you claimed to care for. You quite correctly assumed an ulterior reason for your visit to the tomb. My friend Oskar was new to this city when he received that particular commission. Given all he went on to achieve, the project seems but a trifle and even he – or especially he – may have dismissed his efforts. And yet – pay attention, Celeste – you should know that every artist is a cannibal, feeding relentlessly on those around them, yet feeding on themselves even more. Do you see? You went there because, if you will forgive the figure, those oldest bones may make a reappearance on our evening’s menu.’
The attendants had gone, and each woman stood in a muslin bathing costume, sleeveless, their legs bare from the knee. Miss Temple rocked on cork-soled slippers. She tried her best to recall the details of the Vandaariff tomb, but her fragile concentration was undermined by the Contessa’s nearness and her insidious frangipani scent. The tip of the Contessa’s scar arched like a comet from under her shoulder strap. Miss Temple tottered closer, the muslin rough on the tip of each breast. Her breath touched the Contessa’s skin. The Contessa was speaking. She could not follow the words. She could not stop herself from leaning forward –
The Contessa slapped Miss Temple hard across the cheek. Miss Temple staggered, but kept her feet.
‘Wake up. If you ruin this, I’ll have you skinned.’
‘I am perfectly well.’ Miss Temple swallowed. ‘I will be the one skinning you.’
‘Say nothing if you can help it. Respectful silence, pliant nubility – listen to me.’ She reached out and pinched Miss Temple’s nipple. Miss Temple squeaked. ‘And don’t stare.’
‘Stare at what?’ Miss Temple whimpered.
The Contessa turned to the opening door and slipped into a curtsy Miss Temple just managed to echo.
‘Signora.’
It did not seem that the portly, grey-haired woman in the doorway approved of the Contessa, any more than she enjoyed her unflattering bathing costume, soaked through and dripping.
‘Your Grace,’ murmured the Contessa.
The Duchess of Cogstead exhaled without pleasure. ‘Follow.’
The sanctum of squalid fairies, a cavern where gaslight laid a uric shimmer across the surface of the water. Miss Temple’s attention darted between the women in the pools, floating with the stolid determination of pondering frogs, and the hundreds more that stood along the walls, eyes lit with envy at those immersed – young and old, thin and fat, pink, pale, mottled, brown and veined. The mineral smell grew sharper as they walked, for the Duchess took them to the thick of the steam, to a wide bath whose far side lay in a cloud. She waded in, first down hidden steps and then, like a lumbering seal finding its ease, gliding gracefully to the centre of the pool. The Duchess stopped before a seat of mineral-glazed brass. Its equally substantial occupant – wide, fat, paste-coloured – was obscured by four servants, each tending to one floating, bloated limb. As the pool’s denizens watched, these servants wrapped and rewrapped their respective arm or leg with strips of cheesecloth, smearing between layers a greasy balm on their patient’s putrid, honeycombed skin.
The Contessa stabbed a nail into Miss Temple’s palm and she obediently dropped her eyes to the water. The Duchess spoke too quietly to hear – the hissing pipes, the low voices, the lapping pools, all rebounded off the tile in a buzz. Miss Temple leant closer to the Contessa’s towel-wrapped ear. She wanted to ask why she was here, why she had been saved, what the Contessa hoped to gain from a despised monarch who, if one could credit popular opinion, cared less about the state of her nation than Miss Temple, a keen eater of scones, cared about grinding flour. But what she whispered instead was this: ‘Why does everyone here dislike you?’
The Contessa replied from the corner of her mouth. ‘Of all people, you should know that counts for nothing.’
‘I have never cared.’
‘Lying scrub.’
‘She will not grant your request.’
‘I request nothing.’
The Queen gave the Duchess her reply, a sibilant fussing that ended in a flip of one puffed hand, and the Duchess extended a formal wave to where they waited. The Contessa descended into the pool, allowing the water to reach her breasts before extending both arms with a pleasing smile and pushing forward. Miss Temple advanced more slowly. The water was very hot and contained an unexpected effervescence. She sank to her chin and pinched herself. The Duchess made the Contessa’s introduction.
‘Rosamonde, Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza, Your Majesty. An Italian gentlewoman.’
‘I am much honoured by Your Majesty’s attention,’ the Contessa murmured.
The Queen’s eyes in their leprous folds showed all the emotion of a toad.
‘And the Contessa’s companion,’ continued the Duchess. ‘A Miss Celestial Temple.’
Miss Temple bobbed her head, fixing her eyes on the floating basket that held cheesecloth and the greasy cruets.
‘I do not see why,’ wheezed the Queen in complaint.
‘Why should I see anyone when I am not well.’
The Duchess gave the Contessa a dark glare. ‘I am told the news is important.’
No one spoke. The water lapped against the tiles. The Queen huffed.
‘Funny … thing.’ The words came out in exhalations, as if the effort to form full sentences had been lost with her health, grammar perishing alongside mobility and hope. ‘Always to mind with an Italian. Roman honey. Gift from Sultan. Arab? African? Poppy?’
‘Her Majesty’s memory is far superior to mine,’ said the Duchess.
‘Sealed jug. Inch of wax if there was a dab – common clay pot – came with ribbons. Velvet sack. African velvet must be rare. I hope no one stole it, Poppy.’
‘I will consult the inventory, ma’am.’
‘Everyone steals everything. Italy? Italy.’ She poked a finger, thick as a gauze-wrapped candle stub, at the Contessa. ‘Jar of honey from the bottom of the sea. Roman ship, sunk by …’ The Queen paused, snorted. ‘Whales. Wicked. Whales eat anything. Still good. On account of the wax. Thousand-year-old honey. Ancient bees. My tenth year in the seat, or twelfth. Nothing like it on earth, rare as … rare as …’
‘Milk from a snake, ma’am?’ offered a lady clustered behind the Duchess.
‘Never,’ growled the Queen. ‘Notion’s absurd.’ The servants took her subsequent silence as an opportunity to work, wiping the mottled skin with a sponge and spreading a new strip of cloth, the yellow oil seething through the weave.
‘Did Your Majesty enjoy the honey?’ the Contessa asked demurely.
‘Ate it all with a spoon.’ The Queen wrinkled one eye against a bead of sweat. ‘Lady Axewith says I must see you.’
The Chemickal Marriage Page 34